


The Best Christmas Party in the World

by alunsina, slashedsilver



Category: VIXX
Genre: Christmas Decorations, Cuddling, Drunken Confessions, Fluff, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:38:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alunsina/pseuds/alunsina, https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashedsilver/pseuds/slashedsilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know what would be nice? A Christmas party, a small one, just with the members," Hakyeon says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Christmas Party in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wykedpanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wykedpanda/gifts).



> Thank you to [Ms Shelby Phillips](http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/introducing-the-six-elements-of-party-planning-from-the-heart), without whom the party planning would have been a mess (or more of one, at least).
> 
> An extra surprise for wykedpanda for your services to the fest ♥ Hope you like this!

 

_1\. Invitations_

"You know what would be nice?" Hakyeon says as soon as the ajumma hands them the plate of kalbi, intercepting before the usual suspects (aka, Taekwoon and/or Sanghyuk) makes off with half of it. "A Christmas party, a small one, just with the members." He gets the intended effect: all of the members emerging from the fog of exhaustion and lack of sleep and staring in his general direction. Good.

Sanghyuk drags his gaze from the plate to Hakyeon's face. "Is hyung going to be there? That's not my definition of nice."

"I have drama filming," Hongbin says. Wonshik leans in to whisper in his ear. "I don't know my schedule for the rest of December but I'm sure I'll be on set. Every day."

"At all hours." Wonshik nods. "I'm going to be there to support him."

Taekwoon is poking the corner of his mouth with his chopsticks, seemingly unable to respond, and hasn't taken his eyes off the kalbi the entire time.

"Is this what we have become?" Jaehwan lets out an offended snort on the other side of the table, shaking his head. He looks at the rest of the members with what Hakyeon can only describe as deep disappointment. "How did VIXX get like this, huh? We used to listen to hyung well! We used to be so close, like a real family! Now we barely talk during dinner anymore."

"Hyung, didn't you just talk about trying on the Cinderella shoes in your musical?" Sanghyuk says.

"The point is," Jaehwan continues, "Hakyeon hyung is sharing his very nice idea of celebrating Christmas together." He nods approvingly in Hakyeon's direction. "And he's holding the plate of meat."

"Say yes, kids," Taekwoon says, with no small amount of pleading in his voice. The rest mumble their agreement. Finally.

Hakyeon grins and puts down the kalbi on the table. "Great! That's settled then! Ah, I thought my arm would fall off."

 

 

_2\. Theme, Mood and Colour_

"It's marsala," the interior designer explains. "The colour of the year."

Hakyeon stares at the purplish pinkish square on the colour chart on the wall. It stares back at him like it means business. Not exactly Christmas business but more of a purpley, pinkish, murky business. He tries to imagine it plastered all around their dorm walls. He fails.

"Isn't masala a dish?" Sanghyuk perks up with sudden interest.

Hongbin hooks his chin over Hakyeon's shoulder and gives his very intelligent input. "I thought it was a curry."

"It's _marsala_ ," the designer interrupts, making a commendable attempt to emphasise the _r_. "And it's not pink," he hastens to reassure Hakyeon. "It's more... reddish-brown."

"Chicken tikka marsala," Sanghyuk says, and Hongbin bursts out laughing.

"Children," Hakyeon begins, holding out his hand to imbue a sense of much-needed gravitas, but even the most inspirational and rousing speech leaves him when he looks at the colour again. "Are you sure this will look good on our walls?

"Are we redecorating?" Hongbin asks Sanghyuk in an aside, as though their esteemed leader and extremely experienced party planner isn't standing in front of them.

"We're celebrating Christmas, right? Not something else?" Sanghyuk reaches for the colour square and spins it around on its hook. It looks almost decent as a mixed blur.

"It's a very versatile colour," the interior designer continues valiantly. "With New Year's around the corner, surely you can imagine exchanging kisses with your loved ones against the backdrop of this magnificent hue."

The kids look aghast.

At the same time: "We live in a dorm of _guys_."

"Who would want to kiss Hakyeon hyung?"

They exchange high fives because they are twelve.

Hakyeon imagines taking selfies against this background. _Oppa looks amazing but what's wrong with the lighting? ㅠㅠ Oppa looks kind of yellow ㅋㅋㅋ_

A cold gust of wind makes him shiver. "I think we'll stick with white."

Sanghyuk's stomach rumbles and Hakyeon despairs. They just fed him half an hour ago. "Can we all go for lunch now?" Sanghyuk says.

 

 

_3\. Décor and Ambience_

"Stop, stop! The Christmas tree doesn't belong on the arm chair, it belongs on the floor!"

"Oops, careful with the lights there."

There's a crash in the kitchen that sounds like Taekwoon's favourite saucepan and a pained yelp when it connects with a foot. Hakyeon winces in solidarity. It's a good thing everyone's out for schedules, or his highly strung teammates would overreact as usual. No one seems to appreciate the value of a mess before a really awesome party.

Hakyeon glances at his watch—well, if he runs he might just be able to make it to his next schedule. Without stopping. At the speed of a small car.

Brightly, he calls into the room of decorators, "You guys are fine here, right?" One of them, the one who looks like Hyuk might if he ate nothing but muffins for the rest of his life, gives him a bleary thumbs up.

There's someone in a complicated frieze on the top of a short ladder, reaching precariously to place something on the wall. The mistletoe he ordered looks a little on the red side, or maybe that's the poinsettia.

His phone rings again, insistently, and this time he claps it to his ear, backing out of the apartment. "I'll be back in a couple of hours! If Wonshik comes home, tell him that I sent you and not to worry! His hyung has it all under control!"

Later when Hakyeon finally catches a break during filming, he checks all his SNS accounts and finds Wonshik's new Instagram post, captioned, _Christmas decor  #nhyung #why_.

There's a photo of Wonshik's naked back peppered with what looks like an explosion of pine needles. Why anyone would lie down on a pine tree is beyond Hakyeon, but he's nothing if not supportive of his dongsaengs.

 _Oooh Raviravi, isn't that a little bit too sexy?_ He puts a thumbs up emoji to show his approval of the fanservice before rushing back to work on location.

 

 

_4\. Food and Beverage_

A good party must have good food. Good food is not complete without good wine, or so they say.

It's maybe when Hakyeon is imbibing his sixth or seventh glass that he starts to think he should have eaten something before he came. Or sipped the wine instead of gulping it down. But it was so tasty!

"And this, Mr Cha, is our line of sweet dessert wines. The rosé is a popular favourite." The sommelier tips the amber liquid into a tall glass and places it on the table on front of him. "What did you say would be on the menu again?"

Hakyeon coughs and takes a deep draw of the wine. "Pasta," he says confidently. He'll just have to bully Taekwoon into cooking for him. The last he checked he still has blackmail material on his phone and laptop and iPad. If all else fails (meaning, if Taekwoon cracks all his passwords or throws all their electronic devices out of the dorm window in a fit of grump) it's also been backed up to the cloud, where it will float forever in cyberspace. Taekwoon should really know better than to do his gym exercises with his shirt off.

More glasses are placed in front of him, and Hakyeon nods and makes appropriate thoughtful noises as he finishes each of them, to show he's very much interested and isn't a little bit tipsy at all. But the sky is getting dark and the man seems to be getting the very tiniest bit impatient. Hakyeon regretfully drains the last glass and just remembers to wipe his mouth with the cloth napkin instead of the back of his hand.

"How much for the..." He gestures towards the second and third bottle, which have been thoughtfully placed in order of consumption.

"The sauvignon blanc, sir?"

"Yes, that," Hakyeon commands. "And the—the ice wine? Wait, make that two ice wines."

The sommelier quotes a price. Hakyeon holds out Wonshik's card. Surely he won't mind.

Wonshik also wouldn't mind if Hakyeon bought a hanwoo set, a Christmas cake to be delivered on the date of their party, a box of pastries (because party planning is hard and starving work), sweets (who doesn't like candy?) and then used the same card to pay for Jaehwan's gas too, since his dongsaeng was adorable enough to pick him up in their manager's car. Very surreptitious, careful planning here.

"The car gets thirsty sometimes." Hakyeon pats the passenger seat affectionately, then proceeds to cuddle it with his face. "We should feed it too." Good car. Best car. And Jaehwan's such a good driver, he can hardly feel the car moving. This has to be the longest catnap he's had the entire week.

Jaehwan pulls out his car keys from the ignition. "We've arrived at the dorms, hyung. For a while now. Um, do you need help getting out?" He peers up at Hakyeon's face, looking Concerned. Hakyeon should be alarmed since it's usually the other way around. "Why are you all red?"

"No, I'm not drunk," Hakyeon insists. "Or am I?" He gestures widely around him, feeling the slightest bit woozy, but hopefully nothing that a pastry and a nap can’t fix. Jaehwan follows the line of Hakyeon's arm to the back seat, and stares at it with the sort of frozen horror he reserves when he accidentally swears on broadcast.

"Did hyung buy all that with Wonshik's card?" Jaehwan asks, a little pitchy.

Hakyeon shoos the ridiculous question away. "Of course not! Only the food. And the wine. The meat." He yawns, incredibly sleepy now. "I charged the Santa suits and the reindeer costumes to Taekwoonie's card."

Jaehwan stills. "Is it all right if I just stay here in this car and never come out?" In a sudden motion, he jerks over and grips Hakyeon's shoulders tightly. "Or we could run away together, hyung, far away from this place. No one would ever know, especially Taekwoon hyung, of what you've done. There will be no bloodshed this Christmas."

Hakyeon shoves a pastry into Jaehwan's mouth. He should be hungry by now from all that driving.

 

 

_5\. Activities_

If there is one thing that Hakyeon consistently overestimates, it is the amount of time that VIXX has, and by extension, himself. He's always been a little over-flexible with his time, too easy to agree to projects and appearances without factoring in time for sleeping or eating, like somehow he can stretch twenty-four hours to something more like a thirty-hour workday.

Still, Hakyeon figures they can spare an hour or two when all their schedules are done for the day, just a quiet moment to themselves in their dorms, with the not-mistletoes hanging over the entrance and looking suspiciously like the azaleas growing in his old school. They could share a small meal of pasta, meat, and some cake, have a round of games (in Santa costumes of course) and the chance to reflect on what they've been through as a team, with the appropriate ambient lighting (tea candles would do nicely). Hakyeon would take the moment to apologise— _I'm sorry I haven't been around as much as I would like, but I'm proud of all of you_ —and they would hug a little or sob or flop over each other the way they do when they've eaten too much and pretend they're just too lazy to go back to their beds. And maybe that's not a bad way to spend Christmas at all, even if they're far away from their families and all they have is each other.

Except there's recording for their full-length Japanese album early on Christmas eve. Hongbin is still on set for Moorim. Hyukkie has promotions for his movie. Taekwoon, preparations for his musical. A fansign. Shooting a little something for the fans on Christmas eve. And by the time they wind down the V app and the VIXX TV filming, there’s their MuBank performance to sort out and choreo to polish for the Gayo special stages.

When they make it back into their dorms, it's the wee hours of Christmas day. They have a few hours before make-up at the salon and rehearsals at SBS. They’ll need to spend it sleeping.

Hakyeon crumples in a heap in the middle of their floor, cold but too tired to get up. The fairy lights are blinking on their walls, their tiny Christmas tree is shedding the pine needles Hongbin would silently sweep up in the mornings, and the fake-mistletoe/poinsettia/what-the-hell-azaleas are pinned at the top of their dorm room door, but he’s too tired to feel Christmassy. He thinks about the cake in the fridge with its red candy canes, the uncooked and inedible hanwoo stored in the depths of the freezer for safekeeping, how everyone needs to rest for a bit, and how Hakyeon, of all the attractive things in the universe, wishes fiercely for some goddamn time.

Just as he musters the energy to shove himself back upright, he finds Sanghyuk sitting across him on the wooden floor, nibbling on a candy cane. In his giant hands is the Christmas cake, held out towards Hakyeon.

"Merry Christmas?" Sanghyuk crunches through the last curved bit of the candy jutting out of his mouth.

Hakyeon squashes the urge to scream _cavities!_ and settles for, "Shouldn't you be going to bed? You can have a slice for breakfast later." Which isn't exactly model behaviour for a healthy diet, but neither is supper before a public performance, and really, everyone should just be sleeping.

Hongbin emerges from his room, face washed clean and bare from makeup. He's wearing his Santa hat again. Under his arm he's carrying the super-secret-hanwoo-set Hakyeon had painstakingly hidden, looking a bit tired but grinning. It's thawed; someone must have shifted it from the freezer to the fridge. "It seems like a waste if we don't enjoy the things you prepared for us."

"Meat!" Jaehwan fist-pumps somewhere above Hakyeon's head.

"Stop being so loud!" Hongbin throws the Santa hat in Jaehwan's face.

Hakyeon stares, uncomprehending. Sanghyuk seems to have grown impatient and lowers the cake to the floor, but not without sticking a finger in the icing and smearing it across Hakyeon's cheek first. Someone nudges Hakyeon on the shoulder. He looks up to see Wonshik, and gets nudged again by something unflinchingly cold against his neck. Hakyeon grumbles and Wonshik laughs.

He shoves the cold bottle of wine into Hakyeon's hands. "You should do the honours of opening this, hyung."

Hakyeon takes it, aghast. "We can't. We have rehearsals later!" When none of the dongsaengs act like they've heard him, he waves the bottle of wine like a threat and calls for back-up. "Taekwoon-ah! They're not listening to me! Tell them we need to sleep!"

"We will sleep," Taekwoon says, nodding gravely. "After eating the cake." He's putting something over his own head Hakyeon realises is a freaking apron.

"But we don't have time," Hakyeon says, and it's almost a whine.

Taekwoon crouches low next to him, reaching out a hand and squeezing his shoulder. "We'll make time, Hakyeon-ah. We'll always make time. Come on, Hongbin-ah, Hyuk-ah. I need extra hands in the kitchen." He pats Hakyeon's shoulder one last time, then stands up, adjusts the apron around his waist. Hakyeon stares at the three backs heading to the kitchen, at Jaehwan poking the remaining candy canes into the Christmas cake, at Wonshik rubbing icing into Hakyeon's—

"How many times have I told you that isn't a moisturizer, Ravi-yah?" Hakyeon bursts out in warning, settling the bottle of wine on the floor before chasing after Wonshik to deliver some neck-chopping retribution. And maybe he’s happier than he should be, surrounded by his members who are embarrassed by sentimental stuff but would give up their sleep so that he could have his Christmas party. It’s almost enough to make him want to—

There’s a forlorn howl as Hakyeon throws himself onto Wonshik and clings to him like a koala, just before they both go toppling down.

"Legs!" Sanghyuk admonishes as he chops the garlic. "I told you, there's no point in training your upper body when your legs are toothpicks."

"I'm not taking my pants off for the Gayo now, am I?" Wonshik complains. It's muffled under his mouthful of Hakyeon's sweater.

"Pasta will be ready in half an hour," Taekwoon proclaims.

 

 

_6\. Special Touches_

What is this?" Sanghyuk asks, looking pointedly at Hakyeon's hand on his arm.

"I love you! All of you!" Hakyeon proclaims, and almost takes out Taekwoon's eye. The Santa Claus hat ends up on the ground.

"So do I, hyung." Jaehwan's eyes are suspiciously bright and his lower lip is wobbling a little. He flings himself into Hakyeon's arms.

"Yeah, that was too much wine," Hongbin concludes. He picks up another empty wine bottle and takes it to the kitchen rinse. The recycling truck will be here in the morning and he refuses to disappoint the garbage collector with poorly sorted trash again.

When he returns, Hakyeon and Jaehwan are cuddling on the couch, a tangle of limbs and disgusting dramatic sobbing. One long tentacle arm stretches out to curl around Hongbin. He dodges just in time, pushing Taekwoon in as the sacrifice. But, like most of Hongbin’s well-intentioned gestures it backfires: Taekwoon topples, pulls at Sanghyuk’s hoodie for balance, who trips Hongbin up with his long limbs, Hongbin desperately clutching at Wonshik, who is beginning to come to terms with how poor his decision to appear at this moment was, but has no time to regret it.

They all fall into the killing embrace of the sea monster.

There was cuddling after all, Hakyeon reflects with satisfaction at still an unreasonable hour in the morning, when he wakes up with Sanghyuk's foot in his face and Jaehwan drooling on his arm. Wonshik's neck is tipped back at an uncomfortable angle and he's snoring loudly enough to wake everyone up, so Hakyeon grabs a cushion and puts it under his head. Er. He meant to whack him in the face, he tells the hidden camera.

"Stop moving so much, hyung," Hongbin mumbles into Sanghyuk's hair.

So he does, snuggling down on Taekwoonie's chest. Manager hyung will be here any minute now. Best to sleep while they can. They didn't quite get to the thoughtful and tearful reflections but there will always be next time. Hakyeon has saved enough tea candles to make it a solemn, meaningful event. In a circle, lit by the warm yellow glow, they will make promises together and maybe weep a little and hug and forget they need to go back to their beds to sleep.

It will be the best New Year's party ever.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Snapshots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8911147) by [Silverdancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverdancer/pseuds/Silverdancer)




End file.
